New stuff

I very firmly believe the adage that it aint what you know that counts, but who you know. I ran into M at her work a week or so ago (as opposed to running into her at our fortnightly craft nights, at which she is FORCING us to make a quilt. There you go M, I complained!) She mentioned running into a former colleague who has just opened a shop in Port Chalmers to sell locally made baby/kid stuff! Does that sound like me or what?! She suggested I contact her to see if maybe there'd be room for me. So I did, and yesterday I went to see her with some things. All of which are now in Little Chalmers on my behalf. I love designing, patternmaking and sewing. Don't like promoting myself, so having my things in a shop (on consignment) suits me perfectly!

Here's the latest crop. A bubble dress, modelled by Isabella. So willing. So unable to stand still. (I do love this shot though.)

Shirt.

Trousers. Not sure why the photo of the back is first, but it's too much trouble to shift them around before I post!
Front. I love the robot stencil. I have discovered that freezer paper stencils can be used more than once, which is great!

Here's Isabella in the altered Heidi dress. I re-cut the sleeves to be un-gathered petal sleeves which vastly improved the balance of the dress, and sewed buttons (from the shirts used) to hold the straps. Better.

Progress shot of Isabella's coat. Facial blurring done by Isabella, not me editing.
Back. Really loving this.
I still have to do buttonholes and buttons on a couple of things, but that means hauling out Georgia's sewing machine since it works much better with my buttonholer than mine since it actually sews slowly. Which mine doesn't. So that won't get done till the twins are in bed or at Kindy.

I'm on Felt!

Thanks to the fact that I know people who are way better at marketing me than me, I now have a presence on Felt. Neat huh? I realised a long time ago that I have confidence in my ability to do the designing, pattern making, prototyping and producing. I have pretty much no confidence at promoting myself. Thankfully I know Kahlia who has all that in spades, and she has taken on my stuff on my behalf. (And her Mum's a friend of mine so if she gets bolshy I can go crying to M!) Cheers Kahlia!

And since poor Isabella pretty much only gets prototype designs these days it was inevitable that her new winter coat would be one. The weather has suddenly gone from drab to "OhCr*pSheNeedsHerNewCoatSOOOOOOON!" So I thought I'd better crack on with it.

So far it looks like this.

Yeah, I should be sewing, not blogging!

Take Two

I would have finished this sooner, but I had to wait till I could get to town for thread. And I would have blogged it yesterday but the teenager had the camera batteries!

So here is Hotpatterns 1089, The Three Graces T shirt, take two. (Same fabric, totally new top) I've altered it very slightly from the original version - in about 6cm (total reduction) at the waist, and out about the same at the hip. I hemmed it at 3.5cm instead of the 5cm allowed, and messed with the neckline to make it less bulky where back meets front. I also omitted any form of sleeve, since I think it would have been too much in this shiny fabric. (And I like sleeveless tops - with a layer under for warmth I can wear this year round) I just used cross grain strips of self fabric to do a binding/facing on the armholes. Looking at these photos I think I should have spent a bit of time in front of the mirror arranging it to sit better, but it's probably better to have a truer representation of how a garment looks in the real world!

Back. Despite my waist reduction it's still not very shapely. I might have a fiddle with pinning out a little more on this one to see if it looks better, but I 'm not at all unhappy with this shape. I wonder whether the addition of a cb seam for additional shaping would be worth doing?
Verdict: this is (I think) the most expensive pattern I've ever bought, at around NZ$30, so I was very very keen for it to be a success. And I think it is. I love the drapes, and the way it feels to wear. While it was a lot of buck, I think it is worth it for the bang. And there are two more versions in the pattern to try......

Why prototypes are essential

Katy at No big Dill is hosting a month of guests showcasing clothing designs inspired by childrens books. What a great idea, I thought. I design childrens clothes, I read childrens books (I can recite "The Little Yellow Digger" from memory. Just ask David, who turned the pages for Nicholas while I recited it from across the room!).

So I started thinking about books, and suddenly thought of Heidi, my favourite book when I was a child. I remembered the illustrations, like this:

And this:
When I was about seven I got this dress as a hand me down from my cousin. I called it my Heidi dress and it was probably my favourite dress of my whole childhood.

So I decided to have a crack at a 21st century version along the lines of the designs I'm currently working on. Striped skirt, some gathers (I gathered a panel in the cf of the bodice and made puffed tulip sleeves, giving the feel of the peasant style original), flowers embroidered on the skirt (remember Heidi gathering meadow flowers?). Two recycled mens shirts (I'm sure Heidi wore recycled clothes) and here we go:
Looks ok on the hanger doesn't it?

Then I put it on Isabella. And inside my head I swore. Loud and long. I struggled to get a picture of her standing still and straight to show the problem in all it's glory, but you get the idea - the skirt collapses instead of gently flaring out (every other dress I have made along these lines, from this block, flared perfectly fine) and the SLEEVES!
This one really emphasizes the problems. Blech.
This is more like it should look. Unfortunately I don't think I can persuade Isabella to spend the day walking around with her hands in the air.
I am really annoyed - since I was using a known block and stable fabric I wasn't expecting this! I'm going to remake the sleeves (as much smaller probably un-puffed petal sleeves) and I'm thinking that some stiffening along the hem might help.

On a much less grumpy note, Beangirl has bestowed upon me the "Stylish Blogger" award. (Something to do with us unpopular girls sticking together I think) The rules state that I have to thank the person who awarded me (Cheers Beangirl!) and list seven unexpected things about me. Which is why it's taken days to respond - I couldn't think of a single interesting thing to say! I'll do my best.

1 I do not believe in any form of supernatural anything whatsoever, nor superstitions. Apart from one - if I make a bowl or glass "ting" I grab the rim to stop the noise - to stop a sailor drowning. My Mum told me this one when I was a child (her family loved to sail and were very involved with the RNLI)

2 I am totally unafraid of spiders (the joy of growing up in a country where practically nothing is poisonous!) I will cheerfully pick them up (or any bug with legs) but I cannot abide slimy things - worms, slugs, snails - they make my skin crawl and no amount of money would make me go near one. I won't step on one or run one over with the buggy wheels, not out of concern for their well being, but my own desire not to get worm on my shoe. This may have something to do with my total disinterest in gardening. I really really want to handle a tarantula. A lot.

3 My fantasy dream job would be either head of the historical costume department for the BBC or a conservator in a big museum with a huge textile collection.

4 I got my navel pierced about 8 years ago, to celebrate losing 29kg. I got asked a lot about how I lost so much weight, and how much work I did at the gym to do it. I got a huge kick out of saying none - I joined the gym after I lost the weight. And I lost the weight by watching what I ate, cutting waaaay down on snacking and being calorie aware rather than rigidly counting. I haven't stayed at that weight because it required fairly strict discipline. My set point is a few kgs above, and with fluctuations I pretty much stay there.

5 My favourite singer is David Gray. Hands down, no competition. My sister has seen him perform at Glastonbury. Twice. He performed in Christchurch a couple of years ago, but I was pregnant enough with the twins to be nervous about travelling. We thought he was going to perform there again this year, but can find no confirmation of this. If he does, we're GOING!

6 I have never had a fight with my husband. We've been together for 16 years and in all that time he's never made me angry. We disagree on plenty of stuff, but somehow we can disagree without heat. Dunno why that is, but it makes for a very contented home. I tell him that as soon as he p***es me off, I'll let him know. Possibly the fact that he notices and thanks me for every tiny little thing I ever do for him is also a factor.

7 I only learned to drive 9 years ago after having my third child. I got a speed camera ticket on a driving lesson, and failed my practical test for my full license for speeding up before getting to the sign that indicated a higher limit. I consider the $70 it cost me to resit the test a fine. (Just for the record, I passed with flying colours the second time. I went over the same route, and crawled down the hill where the sign was, with every other car whizzing by me.) I've never been done for speeding since. Because I don't speed.

Phew, anyone who got this far deserves a cup of tea and a lie down!

I can be quick!

I confess this post is pretty much only here so that I can have a slight smirk at Keely. We ordered some Hotpatterns weeeeeeks ago. (By "we" I mean she placed the order and I took advantage to piggyback!) The original order never arrived, so Hotpatterns resent them and they arrived yesterday. While texting Keely during the day arranging to pop out to her place to pick mine up, I smirked that maybe she'd like to bet on whether I could get the 3 graces top I've been dying to make done by today. She sensibly didn't take the bet!

Got home 8pm-ish and got to work tracing and cutting my trial version. If this one works, yippee! If not, no big deal. Um, yeah, those instructions are brief. I labelled the twisty seams and spent a while staring blankly at the instructions willing them to suddenly become clear. Eventually I just tried different configurations until I think I got it right. I wasn't prepared to sew at that point so left it till this morning when I could check the EXTREMELY helpful video Trudy has made demonstrating how it works. It's very easy to sew, but not easy to figure out.

And it looks like this. For the record, I cut a size 8. I didn't bother with sleeves, but I think the armscye will be fine (the weight of sleeves will pull the shoulder seam a bit further towards my shoulders. If I add sleeves. I may just finish the armholes and leave it sleeveless).

My fabric is very very drapey and I like how it hangs.

Back. See how it's pooling on my hips?
But there's heaps of room around my waist.

In a bit at the waist is easy enough to alter on this version, but out at the hips will have to wait till next time.

Meanwhile, here's that navy dress I was making for Isabella on her. Boy it's hard to photograph an excitable two-and-three-quarter year old!

Oh, and my latest Alabama Chanin corset. The fit of this one is better than the red and cream version (I made a small instead of a medium), but after I'd cut it out I remembered that I wanted to dip the hem at the front a bit more so it's more like the dip at the back hem. Ooops. The girls at our craft group immediately guessed that this means I need to make another one. They know me well.

Weird trousers

As promised yesterday, here's a scan of those trousers - #137 from Burda 09/03.

The big circle is a sewn-on motif or buckle or something.

And the pattern pieces - neat huh?

Difficult to alter, but fortunately I know from experience that Burda pants generally fit me well, so worth a gamble. I didn't have to alter these at all, except that they're SHORT! The grey ones I was wearing in yesterday's post have added flaps at the hem to give extra length.

I might need to make these again. You can never have too many subtly weird pants in your wardrobe.

Stuff I should wear more often

Like so many others I want to mention the Christchurch earthquake. We live about 300km south of Christchurch, and I have visited it many, many times - the last being two weeks after the September earthquake. I have nothing to say that has not been said infinitely better by others, but want to add my most heartfelt "Thanks, World" to the hundreds and hundreds of rescue workers from all over the world helping in the grimmest of tasks. David and I both have relatives in Christchurch, all of whom are ok. Facebook finally gets useful!

It certainly put my pouty whining about waiting for patterns into proper perspective. (They have been given up for lost, and immediately resent.)

I've almost finished the new Alabama Corset - stitching on the binding, then stitching around the hem. A day or two and it'll be done. (Depending entirely on how much Mad Men I get to watch). I have finished the navy blue dress for Isabella from my last post. Turns out I had a pile of piping cord tucked in another box marked "notions". I would photograph it today, but it is YET ANOTHER grey and dreary day. So our cr*p summer limps to an end. It hasn't been particularly cold, but it sure does seem to have been grey and damp.

So anyway, I decided that I am sick of the way I dress. (Again. This happens about once a week.) This time triggered by a really well presented Mum at Kindy. It got me thinking that I could do better. So I went digging in my drawers and found these pants. (I made them in a stone colour as well.)


They're from a 2003 Burda magazine, #137 from 09/03, to be exact, and are now a smidge too small, (made in the days when I was prepared to be disciplined enough to keep my weight under the recommended BMI.) but still wearable, especially with this loose tunic style shirt, also a Burda mag pattern, but I can't be bothered hunting out the details right now. I will if anyone wants to know. If I were less vain I'd show you a proper shot of the front, showing the angled zip, or of the back, showing the angled CB seam, but I couldn't bring myself to publish those! Looking at these pics makes me realise that the details are really hard to make out. The pattern pieces are really interesting, so when I get a chance I'll scan the line drawing and pattern overview to show them better - I love this sort of project!

Procrastinating again....

The twins are tucked up having their nap, although judging by the occasional chirp audible on the baby monitor Isabella is spending more time chatting to Soggy Bunny than napping. (Soggy Bunny is a very cute stuffed bunny. He acquired the "Soggy" bit from me, after I surreptitiously popped him in the napisan to soak for the squillionth time, since Isabella likes to suck/chew his leg. Even she calls him that now.

So I have about an hour and a half to myself before waking them, giving them lunch and taking them to Kindy (which gives me another hour and a half!) So in time honoured fashion I'm procrastinating.

I could be working on this dress for Isabella, the pattern for which came from a magazine I bought last September. The dress has been cut and partially assembled for weeks (probably months) and came to a grinding halt because I couldn't be bothered to cut facings. It'll only take a couple of minutes to trace facing patterns from the dress pattern (the original is double layered so didn't need facings) and cut them out, but I can't be bothered. And it's been languishing in a pile on my desk ever since. Hence the dire need for it to see an IRON before I take it up again.

Or there's this dress, which is the first iteration of a design from the grey toile from my previous post. I haven't abandoned the idea of puffed sleeves on something else, but not with this fabric. It's lines came from a rough sketch in my sketchbook (well, everything in my sketchbook is rough!) I've tried the bodice on Isabella and I'm happy with the look and fit, but she wasn't in the mood for a photoshoot.
I love piped edges! This one came to a halt because I ran out of piping cord. The waistband will also be piped. (Although since the bottom edge of the waistband is at the waistline, it's probably more accurately a midriff band.) And it also needs a really good press before I start working on it again. I love this crossover back design. Isabella often wears the pink dress I made a while ago (another prototype of course!) and I find the cross over back just brilliant - easy to get on and off with two domes holding it closed, and the back flaps far enough over that it doesn't open where it shouldn't, and it gives her plenty of room to move (handy when you're climbing onto the slide at Kindy) It is so helpful to have her test wear my designs to see how they work in use on an active toddler! Nicholas is less useful as a fit model since he's so tiny that I have to custom make his clothes in "Nicholas Size" rather than according to any size chart!

Oh, and there's this.
And the terrible reason I'm not feverishly working on this one? I've borrowed Seasons 1-3 of Mad Men from my sister and will be watching while the twins are at Kindy this afternoon. Handwork goes very well with DVD watching.

And of course the lavender dress from my last post hasn't been touched since I hung it up after taking it off Isabella. All it needs is some embellishment. Haven't decided what image or technique to do, so it's hanging there, eyeing me forlornly, another in-progress project.

Still waiting for the Hotpatterns. I'd have to check with Keely for the exact details, but it's been WAY OVER the 28 days it should have taken since she placed the order, and her emailed query was answered vaguely - not addressing her specifically worded questions. Delays are frustrating, but they happen. What is irritating me is that the response from Hotpatterns came across as giving her the runaround. I imagine that as a small company they're pretty busy, but I do feel that if a customer asks you a direct question as to the status of their order you should either give them the answer or say that you don't know for whatever reason.

And since I'm really trying to avoid doing anything productive, here's a question for you - if you see a tutorial on the web somewhere in which a strip of fabric very clearly cut along the grain is described as being bias, how much would it bother you, and would you comment a tactful correction? I saw this a few days ago, and it really really bothers me! The tutorial is written by a homesewer, for other homesewers, probably with little experience. I didn't comment because I don't want to look like a snobbish know it all belittling her efforts with a trifling correction. (Although since the strip in question was binding a neckline it would have worked a lot better had it actually been cut on the bias, so maybe not so trifling?)

The fit model

I think I've mentioned before that Isabella is a very willing and cooperative fit model. However, she is 2 3/4 years old. Enthusiasm is fantastic, willingness to take direction is brilliant. Ability to hold a pose for longer than a millisecond is non-existent! Add her small twin to the mix, wanting to get his hands on the camera, and you get photoshoots like this - dodgy focus, less-than-ideal poses, but at least it's quick!




The bottom 2 photos are next to useless for evaluation purposes, but I did have a better look when I tried it on her. Even over a dress and t shirt it does meet easily (it's cut from a bodice block, not an overgarment block) and the sleeve works just fine. So this design gets to go another round. I wonder what the final design will look like? Thank you Beangirl for suggesting a jacket - I'm now imagining a cropped, puffy sleeved jacket similar to this one I made before. I love drafting - endless possibilities!

And really all of this is just to distract me from waiting. I piggybacked on Keely's Hotpattern order and all I can think about is the 3 Graces top (the cowl necked cross over one of course) which is very very slowly winging it's way to me now. (Well, actually it's winging it's way to Keely, but I'll get it right away! 28 days from her order was Last Sunday. Sigh....) I feel like I'm cheating on my 80 hour top - I'm working on that but thinking about the new pattern.

Stuff in progress

Yet another motivation to blog - friends who give me a hard time about not doing so! Why they complain I can't understand - I brought my top to our fortnightly craft night last night, so they could have taken a close up look if they'd wanted to!

This one is progressing considerably slower than the red and cream one because I keep having to do other stuff. A couple of shirts for a friend of David (broad of shoulder and chest, slender of waist and neck, poor guy can't buy a shirt to fit, so was very pleased with a couple of custom made shirts). I may have shot myself in the foot with them though - David now knows I can knock out a shirt in a day or two (when fit has already been worked out). Oops.

I also made another bubble dress for a market next week. Kahlia is having a stall and offered to sell my designs on my behalf. She is so much better at marketing me than I am, and shortly starting her own website to sell the reusable lunchbags and other things that she makes, along with other products for kids. Since I'm not doing anything else with my designs at the moment it seems like a perfect fit to me!
And I figured it was about time I got back into some pattern work, so here is my work in progress (so, J, K and M, you can stop giving me a hard time about not updating my blog - this is what I'm up to!)
I got Helen Joseph-Armstong's pattern drafting book out of the library last week (I'll do a post on the bodice block when I've toiled it - it looks odd to me!) and the drop shoulder idea took hold. Above is my first go at it. The sharpie line is where I think I'll add a princess line. I've no idea what the neckline or skirt of this dress will look like yet, (I think it'll be a dress) but I wanted to try the gathered sleeve before I commit to further work on it. I got this far before I took the twins to kindy, so I have yet to try it on my house model.

And there's also this dress, another prototype of course! This one is intended to be for Isabella.

I loved the pleat/belt combo from a dress I saw somewhere, and it's an easy feature to do, but unfortunately it doesn't give enough fullness to the skirt. Again I have yet to check on the house model, but I think the skirt will look a bit skimpy. I haven't decided how to deal with this yet for the next version, but this one may just get shortened to tunic length. Since I'm not sure, I haven't added any embellishment to the dress. It's just hanging around, waiting.

So there you are - several projects in various stages of completion. I'm capable of intense focus and prolonged dedication to a project or idea, and also of having the attention span of a gnat.

Not obsessive, really

Sometimes I've been motivated to blog because I really don't want to see whatever photo is at the top one more time when I log in. This has been pretty much the opposite - I didn't want to get rid of the latest one!

So I decided to make another eighty hour top.

Navy with hot pink underlayer (since the crafty girls' consensus on Monday was to go with this rather than the grey I'd had in mind first). Paint and stitching will be grey.

It's a different rose stencil, in three sizes to mix it up a bit. (A very small bit).

Meanwhile I finally got around to making the Oliver+S ruffle halter which I have wanted to make forever, and printed out months ago. (It's available as a free download here.) I'm not a big fan of halter necks for small children because they don't tend to stay sitting nicely when playing, especially if you layer them with a T shirt (I live in Dunedin - we layer a lot, even in summer, sigh...) So I made a full back. Deciding just how I'd do this was the reason for the procrastinating. In the end I just made the back exactly the same as the front (since the ruffle makes it obvious which is the front!) and traced a facing which went to the inside, but was otherwise constructed exactly the same way as the front.

And Isabella wore it on Monday to her first day of Kindy.

Front, two prints from the same range, so identical colours.

Back

Eighty hours later

It's finished. I don't really know what else to say about it after I spent what I estimate to be eighty hours making it, all by hand. (I even did my hair for photos - that's the level of respect it gets!) I was right about the binding - it just brings everything to where I want it to sit.

It might sit better across my back if I wasn't trying to quickly get into position before the timer went off on the camera!

The binding is sewn on with rosebud stitch. I spent a very frustrating time with google trying to find an explanation of rosebud stitch after seeing many examples on the Alabama Chanin Flikr group. So many people referred to it that I figured it had to come from one of the books and was probably also known as something else. An hour or so of fruitless searching later I gave up and sat down with a needle and thread in front of a photo on the computer and had figured it out in approximately 30 seconds.
I didn't want to bind the hem, but I worried that the areas of unstitched red would curl up too much once washed, so I did the same stitch around the hem to finish it off.
My fear now is that the knots will come undone in the wash. I was a bit nervous anyway because my thread (Molnlycke Goliath) is 100% polyester, not the cotton cored, polyester wrapped thread used by Natalie Chanin. (If I ever find that I'm buying in bulk!) A discussion thread on the flikr group covered this topic - someone using the same type of thread had had half her knots untie in the wash. As I told Keely, there are not enough swear words in the world to express how I'd feel if that happened, so I quickly did a few lines of stitching onto the sample I'd made of the rosebud stitched binding so I had several knots and tossed it in the washing machine. To my intense relief none of them came undone, so I'm hoping for the best.

So close!

Not that I get obsessed or anything, but it really is amazing how much you can achieve when you put in at least six hours a day on one project. (And your husband is on holiday to play with the twins!) Pricked fingers aside (don't like wearing a thimble) I have loved every single slow second of this project. And now I've finished seaming it.

Interesting tan lines acquired sitting outside in the sun while I stitched. (Note to self - improve posture in photos)

I still have to bind the neckline and armhole edges , which will take a while as well, but in a couple of days I will be wearing it! I reckon it'd look fantastic with old denim......

Seeing it on myself reminds me that I should have gone with the smaller size (this is size "M"). I was worried that the lesser degree of stretch would make it too small, and that the sewing would further reduce stretch. Well, I made very sure as I sewed all those roses that the fabric would still stretch so that isn't an issue. Further, once I'd snipped out the motif centres the pieces eased out a bit as well. I didn't sew the seams as described in the instructions because I thought that might be unwieldy to stitch flat, and too bulky (visually "clunky", if that makes sense). Instead I sewed them as lapped seams, (which also added room, requiring little or no cloth allowance) so I just overlapped each one a smidge more than indicated. I think I should have overlapped a little more, as this is a little bigger than it should be. The shoulders are a little wide, but binding the neckline may bring it in a little. Since it's cotton jersey I'm going to wash it before I start taking it in! I suspect it will have a tendency to grow in wear and shrink back in the wash. (I did preshrink the fabrics before I started.)

Maybe I'll just have to make another one in the smaller size, hehehe.

I hadn't realised until I got into the project that the two layers would retain so much suppleness and flexibility - normally sewing two layers of fabric together like this (by machine) would make the resulting unit considerably stiffer, but this method doesn't - yippee! The layers give each other support and body, but the garment is soft and flexible. I'm really curious to see how it wears.

And to answer a couple of questions and comments:

Joy, my machine is a Globe 550, which I understand was marketed by but not made by Bernina. It has run like a dream since I talked my father into buying for me when I was 14. (That's 27 years) One model up from entry level it does everything I want (unless I get a really good machine that does embroidery, sigh.....) Oh yeah, and I have yet to teach it to make me coffee.

Karen, I love the spirals on your top! I know exactly what you mean about enjoying the contemplative nature of this sort of sewing. (I'm probably hooked now.) And how something will go into your head as one thing and emerge as something else!

Keely, I'll bring it tonight so you can pass judgement :-)